I know as a married college student, whose husband is very adamant about staying out of debt, I find any method of saving cash to be quite appealing. (Because even if I am just browsing the IKEA website, my husband's palms get sweaty and he gets antsy in his pantsies).
One easy way to save, is to learn how to change your oil...by yourself. (Okay, okay I know changing your oil won't save you that much money, like this picture falsely suggests, but looking back on past bank statements, its easy to see how $5s, $10s, and $20s quickly add up and can leave you in the red if you aren't careful).
Luckily, I ran into my friend who mentioned that his old jeep was in need of an oil change. So I asked him if he could teach me this little bit of folk knowledge (that has obviously only existed since cars have been around). He raised an eyebrow and accepted.
Before we got started, he lent me some clothes and said that we were going to get dirty. (Now it was my turn to raise my eyebrow). At first I just watched while he slid under the car with his gizmos and gadgets and loosened the bottom of the container that holds the oil. All of a sudden a splurge of black gooey looking stuff came pouring out! (And yes, we had a container to catch it).
Then he told me to get under the car, handed me the a socket wrench, and told me to tighten the drain plug. I ran into some minor difficulties, but he was able to talk me through them. Here's a little video of my experience...
The three most important things I learned about this were:
- What a socket wrench is, and that it only twists one direction
- That I didn't learn the "righty-tighty" rule for nothing.
- And that I have really, and I mean really, poor upper body strength. Haha.
After getting the drain plug on there nice and tight, it was time to replace the oil filter. He told me where to put it and all I did was twist.
Now was the time to refill the oil with fresh "clean" oil. (Yeah, definitely NOT clean). And then BAM! The job was done. Oh wait, we had to dump the "dirty" oil into a container and he said he was going to throw it away at some special garbage dump. And then we were officially done.
After learning the very basics of how to change your oil, I realized how important repetition is when learning something new. I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't be very confident doing this on my own if I were to do it a second time, and would need someone there to guide me through it again. Then it dawned how folk knowledge becomes folk knowledge. It is repeated and repeated over and over again by those around you, whether it is a part of your home, your culture, your religion, daily living, or a specialized skill. It has to be repeated in order to first remember it, and second, to teach it. Then you can claim this bit of knowledge as your own.
I hope to be able to practice this again on my own car to save a little bit of extra cash. Unfortunately, my husband thinks it is more worth it to pay someone else to get it done. Well--I plan on quickly reminding him the importance of working his way out of debt from the furniture I just bought, by changing his own oil. Haha just kidding. Kind of... :)
This was a good point: "Then it dawned how folk knowledge becomes folk knowledge. It is repeated and repeated over and over again by those around you, whether it is a part of your home, your culture, your religion, daily living, or a specialized skill. It has to be repeated in order to first remember it, and second, to teach it. Then you can claim this bit of knowledge as your own."
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